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Ever since Babe Ruth burst onto the scene in 1919 with his single-season record breaking year of 29 home runs (more than some entire teams back then) — subsequently leading to his many superstar seasons that included 60 home runs in 1927 — baseball has been in love with the long ball. In fact, ever since 1983 there has been at least one player each and every season to hit 40 or more home runs, showing just how much baseball has come to depend on the big fly.

With 40 home runs no longer being quite the extraordinary feat that it was back when Ruth was in the middle of his Hall of Fame career — nine total players hit 40+ in 2015 — the new number of astonishment has risen to 50 or more homers in a season, which hasn’t been done in the past two seasons.

The most recent player with 50 or more homers in a season was Chris Davis in 2013, when he hit 53 with the Orioles. But I feel that there is a good chance of at least one player basting 50 homers in 2016, with the slightest of chances that multiple players accomplish the feat.

While more than one player hitting 50+ home runs would seem somewhat unlikely, it’s not as rare as you might think. Sure it’s tough to do, but it was done as recently as 2007 when Alex Rodriguez (54 homers) and Prince Fielder (50 homers) did just that. It was also done in 2006, 2002, 2001, 1999-1996, 1961, 1947 and 1938, with four players hitting 50 or more in both 1998 and 2001.

I don’t see another 1998 or 2001 on our hands, but I do feel that 2016 could become the 12th season in MLB history with two or more players hitting over 50 home runs in a single season.

Of all of the player in baseball, there are three who I feel stand the best shot at 50 this season: Giancarlo Stanton, Chris Davis and Bryce Harper.

Giancarlo Stanton was injured for most of the 2015 season, but as history has shown, he has just as much power as anyone in baseball right now, and is right up there with the all time great power hitters. In the 74 games he did play in 2015, Stanton blasted 27 home runs. If you were simply to double those numbers, Stanton would’ve theoretically hit 54 home runs in 148 games played. While those numbers can’t be taken literally, due to them being mere projections, Stanton undoubtedly has 50+ home run potential, and with the Marlins moving in the fences, I think 2016 will finally be his year if he can stay healthy.

But even though Stanton has the best shot at 50, I think Chris Davis, who is no stranger to big production numbers, has a good chance as well. In 2015, Davis hit 47 home runs, but had 4-5 additional homers robbed by fantastic plays in the outfield over the season. Even so, Davis actually has a 50-homer season under his belt, as previously stated, hitting 53 in 2013. Returning to the Orioles for the next seven seasons, Davis is likely to hit well over 200 home runs over the course of that contract, and I could easily see him popping 50 of them in 2016 alone.

The last of the players on my top three 50 homer candidates list is Bryce Harper. He’s still extremely young, at just 23 years old, but having hit 42 home runs last season, I could envision 50 from him in 2016. His power is undeniable, and with him taking a fantastic approach at the plate last year — either drawing a walk or waiting for his pitch and crushing it — I think Harper will continue to produce MVP caliber numbers for the next several seasons. Whether or not he surpasses 50 homers in 2016 is yet to be seen, but it is certainly not out of the question.

Despite the fact that Spring Training hasn’t even begun, it’s never too early to glance towards the regular season, and I have the feeling that 2016 is going to be an unbelievable year around Major League Baseball. Although there’s the chance that my prediction is way off and no players at all hit 50 or more home runs this coming season, the potential for it to occur is there. That’s more than enough reason to get people around the baseball world excited for the regular season to get underway in less than two months.

As a baseball fan, I obviously can’t wait until Spring Training begins in a couple of weeks (Opening Day is now just under 60 days away). But as an overall sports fan, I can’t wait for Super Bowl 50 on Sunday night between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos.

You may be wondering why I, a die-hard baseball fan at heart, would even be discussing the Super Bowl at all on a baseball blog — other than the fact that my home state’s Panthers are in the big game. Well, the answer is that there are numerous baseball connections within this year’s Super Bowl matchup, and I wanted to take the time to go over just a few of them.

To kick things off (pun intended), I’ll begin with the connection the Super Bowl’s starting quarterbacks, Peyton Manning and Cam Newton, have to baseball.

Peyton Manning was never drafted by a professional baseball team as a number of other NFL quarterbacks have been, but he does have a big connection to the sport. Manning was the back-up quarterback to former All-Star Rockies’ slugger, Todd Helton, at the University of Tennessee back in 1994. The duo ultimately went in two different directions, but each made their marks in their given sports. Although the story of their connection has been told countless times before, it’s still an interesting piece of information to acknowledge, nonetheless.

As with Manning, Cam Newton was never drafted by a big league team, largely due to the fact that he gave up baseball at age 14 for fear of getting hit by the ball (ironic, now that he faces getting sacked on a weekly basis by 250-pound linebackers). While baseball wasn’t the sport for Newton, I’d say that by leading the Panthers to a 15-1 record this season and ultimately to the Super Bowl, Newton definitely discovered the right sport for him.

Digging deeper into each team’s lineups, though there are numerous players who played baseball at one point or another in their past, with some even being drafted by a major league team, the most intriguing case from both lineups is undoubtedly the Panthers’ Shaq Thompson.

Thompson was drafted by the Red Sox in the 18th round of the 2012 draft, but his career wound up being extremely short lived. In 39 at-bats with the Red Sox’ Gulf Coast League team (the absolute lowest level in their organization), Thompson went hitless and struck out 37 times. That’s right — 37 strikeouts out of 39 at-bats. Baseball was clearly not going to work out, but by making it to the Super Bowl, it’s obvious that football did.

In the end, while all of those baseball connections to the Super Bowl are interesting, I still remain a baseball fan through and through and am avidly counting down the days until baseball gets going again. With the Super Bowl upon us, that signals that Spring Training is just around the corner and that the long wait of the offseason is almost over. As baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby put it, “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”